WHY THE TREE LOVES THE AXE

by Jim Lewis

"I was twenty-seven years old and I had lost my way. I found myself driving on an unlit highway through the middle of a black summer night: it wasn't where I'd intended to be." In his second novel, Why the Tree Loves the Ax, Jim Lewis uses the conventions of the mystery to explore the space between what is lost and what is found. When a car accident brings Caroline Harrison to Sugartown, Texas, she is running from her past, but what she finds are the kind of secrets that simmer beneath the surface of small-town America. At first Sugartown seems like a good place to settle, and Caroline finds a home, a job, and a new, anonymous existence. Eventually, however, the creepy sense of foreboding Lewis has skillfully built in early chapters explodes in violence and Caroline is driven out of Sugartown, fleeing first to New York City and finally to upstate New York for the novel's disturbing denouement.

Why the Tree Loves the Ax is a suspense novel at heart, but when it moves toward its climax, the reader is left with the uncomfortable realization that Lewis has deftly deconstructed our notions of Caroline's role as narrator. As events unfold, it becomes clear that her past and her motives are as mysterious as those of any other character, and that the conundrums this mystery seeks to unravel are those of the soul. Lewis wraps his plot in layers of intensely poetic language--a technique that is challenging at first, but ultimately rewarding. Characters seem to exist behind a mist of imagery that keeps us at arm's length, creating a dreamily menacing atmosphere that will linger long after the final page has been turned.

Genres: Fiction, Literature, Adult Fiction, Novels, Literary Fiction

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 27, 1998

About the author

Jim Lewis, born 1963 in Cleveland, Ohio, is an American novelist. Soon after he was born, his family moved to New York; there, and in London, he was raised. He received a degree in philosophy from Brown University in 1984, and an M.A. in the same subject from Columbia University, before deciding to leave academia.

Since then, he has published three novels, Sister (published by Graywolf in 1993), Why the Tree Loves the Ax (published by Crown in 1998), and The King is Dead (published by Knopf in 2003). All three have been published in the UK as well, and individually translated into several languages, including French, Norwegian, Portuguese, and Greek.

In addition to his novels, he has written extensively on the visual arts, for dozens of magazines, from Artforum and Parkett to Harper's Bazaar; and contributed to 20 artist monographs, for museums around the world, among them, Richard Prince at The Whitney Museum of American Art, Jeff Koons at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Christopher Wool at The Los Angeles Museum of Art, and a Larry Clark retrospective at the Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.

He has also written criticism and reportage for a wide range of publications, among them The New York Times, Slate, Rolling Stone, GQ, and Vanity Fair. His essays have appeared in Granta, and Tin House, among others.

He has collaborated with the photographer Jack Pierson on a small book called Real Gone (published by Artspace Books in 1993), and collaborated with Larry Clark on the story for the movie Kids.

He currently lives in Austin, Texas.

Wikipedia.

Reviews

[Doug · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5, rounded up.

I'll tell you it's strange and it makes me wonder, how sometimes in that occult forest, when no one is looking, the ax loves the tree: and it's stranger still that the tree should love the ax.

I absolutely loved Lewis's latest novel, Ghosts of New York, which may very well be my favorite book of the year, so had to investigate his short back catalog. This, his second novel from 1998, bears many of the hallmarks of the latter work - the gorgeous, shimmering, elliptical prose, the odd structure, how it always seems to be moving on shifting sands, and you can never predict exactly where it's going. It doesn't QUITE have the propulsiveness of 'Ghosts', and this took me twice as long to read, even though it's shorter; up until the final pages, in which everything comes together in unexpected but entirely appropriate fashion, I was thinking this was at most a 3.5 star rating - but sticking that ending immediately raised it.

Probably the less said about the plot, the better, but one of the most astounding things about the book is that it is written in first person from the perspective of a 27 year old female - very few male authors would even attempt such a feat, let alone accomplish it with the assuredness shown here - especially the more graphic and/or erotic scenes - the girl's first period, her loss of virginity, a marathon sexual encounter; these all seemed incredibly authentic - but, hey, I'm a cisgender queer man, so what do I know?!

The other thing that intrigued is that the story is set up as some sort of interview or interrogation of the protagonist - an unknown voice occasionally breaks in to ask pertinent questions or for clarification - who that person proves to be isn't revealed until the final page, and, as I've noted, it's both surprising and elevates the entire book. Sadly, the author only has two other published works of fiction, but I've ordered both from my library.

PS: Not sure what that cover illustration has to do with the book, but it's ultra-cool!

[Susan Sage · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderful read -- except for the ending which seemed a little too pat. However, I would definitely read another one of his novels...Complex characters, the plot moves along at a good clip, and often poetic without being stilted.

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

The four stars represent my appreciation and respect for the work and the author rather than my enjoyment level. Felt like I was reading an undiscovered classic. I am haunted by the story as if it were a strange dream.

[Siobhan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Strange little novel

[Lauren Salisbury · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you read "Sister" and liked it, prepare to absolutely love "Why the Tree Loves the Ax." This book begins and end in a way that blindsides you. The novel itself is a compulsive read, that sweeps you away from the very first page until the book is finished. The final lines leave you hungry for more, as is true with Lewis' previous book "Sister." This novel is something out of the ordinary and there is quite a bit to be found in its pages.

[Lora Shouse · Rating 5 out of 5]

About midway through with this book I was starting to get sort of irritated at it. Mostly through the style of the narration (because only a few of the events related are actually improbable in themselves) it was beginning to look like a) either the whole thing was a dream or some sort of drug trip, or possibly a drug-influenced dream or b) it was going to turn out that the person who intermittently poses questions throughout the book was some sort of mental health professional and the narrator was an inmate of some sort of mental institution.

Well, it turns out that Caroline Harrison is an inmate, but not (yet anyway) confined to a mental institution, and the events she describes are true for her. The only parts that are dreams or drug-induced are the ones she describes as such. And the identity of the questioner will come as a surprise.

[Melissa Shelley · Rating 1 out of 5]

I enjoyed his writing style, and appreciated new techniques (like weaving dreams into past and present), but the story fell flat and left me wondering what else I could have spent my time on. Not worth it.

[Lucie · Rating 4 out of 5]

worth reading just for the dear sweet prose. an outstanding writer! even if some of the story is a little muddled, this is a really enjoyable & riveting book.

[Braden Canfield · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this up, loved the first line of the book and read it. Not my usual fare but was quite mesmerizing.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sometimes tries too hard to be a literary work of art, but the story is mysterious and held my interest...an average O.K. read.

[Mike Bahl · Rating 3 out of 5]

VV gave me this a long time ago. I recently bought a handful of physical books and decided it’s time to make my way through these piles of books I’m saving for something, I don’t know, in case the power goes out maybe and I can’t read library books on my kindle. I don’t really have a good explanation for why it took me so long to get to this.

VV says this dude writes a woman’s perspective well. I don’t know if I’d say it’s especially feminine, more indie darling 90s romantic poeticism like Hal Hartley, but maybe that’s what it’s like to be a woman. There’s actually a couple times the possible terror of being a woman is skipped over, like being followed while walking. Except for the section where the namesake of the book is drawn from. At least that paragraph seems to get that right.

Plot summary I guess. Spoilers but it doesn’t matter: Caroline is drifting (we don’t really know why or where she’s been) and gets in an accident in Sugartown, TX. She befriends a woman. There’s civil unrest in town. Caroline kills a cop. She assumes her friend’s identity and goes to NYC because she fucked a guy who worked with her ex-husband and it’s driving her bats that he had another girlfriend and almost married her. She’s also given a box by an old dude she takes carr of in a nursing home and is told to deliver it. Caroline is the other woman from the story about her ex-husband turns out. So she just goes to upstate New York (I truly don’t remember anything even resembling resolution around the Roy stuff) to deliver the box. She’s kinda held hostage there but welcomes it. They’re counterfeiting money. They don’t kill her, they let her go. Eventually she’s caught and the story has been her telling it to her kid. Man, that seems plot heavy and ridiculous but it doesn’t read that way.

I think some of the poeticism would hit different if it weren’t already underlined. I find myself hyping up for the upcoming underlined parts but they can’t quite meet my expectations.

“[Men] were everywhere around me, but like apes in after-school cartoons, they were too big to be anything but friendly and harmless.” When she was 10. Adult now.

This reveal will either save how insufferable this has become for me once she returns to NYC or ruin the book totally. My first instinct was ruin. In fact, I rolled my eyes and almost stopped reading.

“I would have been raping him […]” No, that’s straight up rape.

So this is just another crazy woman story dressed up in flowery language, masquerading as empowerment.

VV notes that Caroline isn’t being honest with herself about believing Roy would feel aborted baby was half his. But I see her as being totally truthful, kinda psychopathic and unable to see what anyone else would feel, only able to consider herself. In fact, there are no quotation marks here for the same there are none in There’s Hope: Ethan and Caroline filter everyone’s words through themselves, gaslighting the reader about anyone else’s perspective.

I didn’t hate this, though my notes make it seem like I did. The prose is compelling, the character is not. I’m more character driven. I do think VV and I had very different takes on this book. I do think Caroline just did stuff and ended up places because that was the stuff the author decided he wanted to write about.

[Ann Chase · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is the longest I've taken to read a book in maybe my whole life. I wanted to suffer through it to give it a completely accurate review and with the slim hope it could get better. I was wrong as it did not. This is a terrible book. The plot is weak and pretty boring, the characters are unlikeable at best and detestable at worst and the writing style is atrocious. Maybe some people like how he writes. For me, so many sentences just made me say "What?" out loud because he made no sense. It felt like he was trying to be so 'clever' and 'unique' and if you don't 'get it' you don't 'get it' but it did not work at all. Without spoilers, the main character felt guilty she had more blood than an old man and was impressed when a man said he was from New York without blushing. What even is that?

Those problems are outside of the issue of the author writing a female character which just meant unnecessary mentions of her breasts and trying to include any and all typical 'female' experiences which I won't spoil but I'm sure you can guess. Women are more than what their bodies can/can't do and can be written without doing every single one of these things like a Woman Checklist. It doesn't work and just felt like another way this author was trying to do something special or groundbreaking, I guess, but again is just terrible.

From reading this book and what I think the author was trying to do, he just seems like he would be an insufferable, pretentious snob that one would hate to be introduced to at a party and then stuck talking to. As if he is so intelligent and if you didn't understand his novel, well, that's on you. In actuality, write clearly and with a better story and shocker, your book won't be drivel not even worth the gas to drop off at the nearest Goodwill or dump.

[Ivana Carvalhais · Rating 2 out of 5]

the entire book i was extremely confused on what was going on. i feel that when the setting changed i was not informed correctly which just resulted it me not like the book. i think the only way for me to completely understand this book is to reread it a couple times and really try to connect the dots myself on the multiple unfinished settings.

[Karen Kaupp Betancourt · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my fav's-strange but well written

[Katy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I felt like I had to force myself to finish this one. I did like the writing style... But not much else.

[Becky Everhart · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book for the most part. The action is dreamlike, the characters comfortable in their surroundings to act as they must. the storyline did not seem forced or predictable. Again and again, I found myself surprised that a man could write as a woman so well. The untrustworthy narrator technique played games with my head just as it was intended to without revoking itself at the end. It was fitting that she did not always know what happened, how, or why.

What I disliked was how the dialog lacked quotation marks, sometimes making it difficult to tell who was talking and when at some points, sometimes wondering which parts were her inflection and which bits were the parts said aloud, sometimes necessitating rereading twice or more per such passage. I also was confused until the end when it was revealed who was asking the italicized questions, whether they were section headings or whatever, but I was glad it was not spoiled any sooner, or the ending may well have been spoiled.

[Chana · Rating 3 out of 5]

The main character is telling her story to someone who prompts her with the occasional question or suggestion, like "what do you mean?" or "why not just begin".
But she seems so whacked. I assumed she was incarcerated either in a mental institution or a jail and was telling her story to a psychiatrist. I assumed she was schizophrenic.
The story she tells is outlandish, you never know when to believe her or not, she is childish, manipulative, cunning and vulgar. Nevertheless, she also makes you like her sometimes. Towards the end she seems to fall into a scene that reminds me of "The Shack", only with criminals instead of the Holy Trinity. She also seems saner which is kind of a relief, and I pretty much liked the ending as it was a bit of a surprise and it never got boring.
I can't say that I recommend this book, but I admire the way the author can wield adjective clauses.

[Lori · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't know if I ever figured out what was real and what wasn't, but that made me love this novel all the more. It was dark and disturbing and yet still absurdly funny and pure poetry. In so many ways it reminded me of Michael Cunningham's writing, only better because it's wilder and more tangled and far more real in its unreality. I enjoyed the writing tremendously and I am always enamored of men who can write a female point of view that's so strong and so true. I loved it. This is the kind of writing teachers need to have on must-read book lists.

[Julie · Rating 3 out of 5]

The storyline was good—a woman awakens in a hospital in Sugartown, Texas, after a car crash. She begins to remember things from her past. After working in a nursing home and receiving a package from a difficult old man to deliver to men in upstate New York, she begins retracing the steps of her past and also starts a new chapter in her life. However, the writing style was an obstacle for me. It was so odd, that at times it seemed like the woman was thinking in a totally altered state, which was a bit confusing and annoying.

[Danielle · Rating 1 out of 5]

I confess I only made it to page 72 of this book and then I started skipping pages. Then I just quit it altogether. The person in the story is clearly mentally imbalanced and I kept wondering what was going on. All the conversations in the book were written from an "intorspective" point of view making it hard to follow. It is almost like she is discussing her life with a therapist but only in her head. Couldn't take anymore.

[Jess · Rating 1 out of 5]

I didn't like the way the book was written, and I found it difficult to read. It was like someone's stream of consciousness, and I found it hard to follow. There was a lot of re-reading sentences and starting over, and it wasn't enjoyable.
I actually didn't finish the book, but rather had a friend who had read it tell me how it ended. After hearing the end, and my friend's opinions on the book, I decided to save myself some time and move on to my next read.

[Hilary · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book. It might have been where I was in my life. Some great lines though: "ok, you're right, he admitted. The truth is, since I was young all I've ever wanted to do was to make a revolution so subtle that no one ever noticed it".

[Allison · Rating 3 out of 5]

Recommended by a friend--I liked it. It was a pretty fast read (not to be confused with an "easy" read--enough uncomfortable stuff for that not to be the case), and the author does a good job using a woman's voice. I found the ending a bit abrupt for my taste, but not bad by any means.

[Tammra · Rating 1 out of 5]

Didn't care for it at all.

[Wendy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hum drum, clever ending.

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Odd read. Is the writer thinking or actually speaking words?! No " " anywhere!

[Jocelyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this. Amazing writing, a very very different book.

[Lela · Rating 4 out of 5]

A perfect dream.

[Sophie Coxon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautiful writing, but hard to read at the same time. Possibly the most challenging book to give a rating to. It was beautiful but difficult as a novel. Far from an easy, or even enjoyable read. But as far as talent goes, he has a lot of it.